I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.

As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.

I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.

That's odd. To me it reads like he doesn't give two shits about slavery either way. His only concern is saving the Union and he would do so at any cost.

Yeah, this the quote they used to teach that the Civil War was about state's rights.

When I was in school, we had to memorize it. Only not the whole thing. Just this part:

"If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery."

So they would take the quote out of context and say "See, Lincoln is saying here that he does not care actually care about slavery. He's fighting to keep the South from seceding, so the war was about state rights."

They ignore entirely the rest of the letter where the obvious point is that while Lincoln himself is somewhat indifferent to slavery, he's acknowledging that there's basically no way they can preserve the union without addressing it in some way. In other words, the two sides are beefing over slavery. They are peripherally fighting over state's rights only in the sense that the state right they want to preserve is the right to have slaves. Lincoln himself personally cares more about the union than slavery but he's acknowledging that this is basically what the dispute is about.

They never made us learn the whole letter. They never even told us it existed.

The other quote they always taught us in great detail was Lee saying "In this enlightened age, there are few I believe, but what will acknowledge, that slavery as an institution, is a moral & political evil in any Country. It is useless to expatiate on its disadvantages."

And of course this was to show that Lee was a great man who was personally opposed to slavery but fought for Virginia anyway.

The rest of that quote is "I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race..." which whoops, that right there is a doozy. "... & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence."

In other words, Lee was totally cool with slavery because black people were too stupid to make it on their own, which must be why God entrusted white people with the burden of having to have slaves and maybe someday God will like, make black people smarter and fix it, but until then slavery is the right thing to do.

This thing comes up every time they debate the Confederate statues in Richmond. You have normal people who are totally not racist say "I think it's important we learn from history. Those statues were put up to commemorate a great general, and a great person, and not anything to do with race. So those statues should stay up, but it's fair to provide some additional plaques to provide more commentary." It seems pretty reasonable.

But then you ask them what they want the additional context to be, and it's "That slavery is bad, and it's a vestige of the Confederacy we should not be proud of but that Lee was a great military leader, who heroically fought to preserve state rights and protect Virginia from Northern aggression despite being against slavery." Which is exactly what all of us were taught. They don't get that they're not providing additional objective commentary, they're reinforcing the same stupid myths used to justify those statues in the first place and that have helped preserve racism for a century and a half.

Yeah, see Trump declaring a national emergency is a bad overreach of executive power. But it's not bad because the Democrats might use this precedent to declare climate change a national emergency. It's just bad in and of itself. If the Democrats never declare a national emergency in the future, Trump's declaration is still bad.

Even if we're dealing with potentialities the far greater concern is that the guy who is already in charge and has already declared the national emergency to get his way will use this to do all sorts of other things whenever Congress does not support him, which it likely won't as the Democrats have the House and no one is much in favor of the wall, tarrifs, or his foreign policy.

But until some conservative will actually step up to the plate and face the issue squarely and say "Trump is wrong. This is bad. Trump should be stopped." instead of "This is bad, because it might open the door to Democrats who need to be stopped" then this will keep happening.

And why not? If I'm a Trump supporter I'd rather gamble on keeping a Democrat out of the office. Because you've already set the stage where Democrats are lawless heathens who will break the rules regardless. Like, why do they need Trump to set a precedent? Hillary would already have declared Climate Change an emergency, right? You're telling conservative to double down at every opportunity then wondering why they are acting like so crazy.

Here in Ohio, Trump's declaring a national emergency had not gone over well. Most national elected Republican officials (Portman, Chabot and the like) were restrained in their comments <sigh> but made it clear they didn't like it.

Court battles are sure to ensue. Trump thinks he will prevail eventually (at the Supreme Court), but I don't think he will. In fact I think we may see a rebuke. I'm hoping for a massive 9-0 rebuke but that may be personal wishful thinking.

He will win on being able to call a National Emergency. The question will be how far do his powers under this emergency extend? And I think he will likely prevail overall because you can make a pretty good case the President has not exceeded his powers.

Because the thing is, it shouldnít have to go to the courts. Congress delegated their powers and they can take them back any time they wish. If they revoke their act of delegation I think then they win. But they wonít.

Thatís the thing. If the Dems call for a vote and lose, then Trump isnít going against Congress. They had a chance to check the Oresudent and they did not. Itís pretty much up to the GOP now, and we know they are spineless.

The problem here is less Trump being a dick but rather the GOP letting him do whatever he wants.

Yep, he will win because even a less friendly supreme court usually sides with presidential power. This needs to be stopped at the congressional level but there's no conservatives left to halt it. Wimps.

Bernie Sanders is running for president. So the coffee guy runs and liberals fume, but the other INDEPENDENT runs, that old white guy, and it's all peace and love and Bernie.

But there is a big distinction in that Sanders plans to run as a Democrat. Which gives him a chance to do what he should have done last time, which is run a friendly campaign and bring in the "progressive" vote, and then concede and talk up whoever wins. If he'd done what he was supposed to do in 2016, the Democrats might have won.

Will he do that? Probably not. But there will be other far leftist candidates running as well who he'll have to target so there's a decent chance at least that the far left vote gets split so no one person ends up looking too bad. And it will be harder for the far-right/Russians to run interference by backing a third candidate. Or at least it forces him to run on actual left issues instead of "Free college tuition" as his Wall and an implied "They took our jobs" pro-union platform that only appeals to rust belt whites.

Can an old white "Socialist" really win either the young college vote or the now-solidly Trump anti-furriner crowd again? I doubt it. But you can't really talk bad about Bernie, because the left is somewhat sympathetic to him as a person and his platform. And the right would start all pumping all those anti-Bernie conspiracy theories again. Of course the Democrats would prefer he not run and hope he loses. I mean, we already saw that last time. But they have to handle him with kid gloves publicly. Just like last time. And if Sanders chooses to be an asshole again, he can damage the Democrats again. But at least there's a chance he might not be such a dickhead this time, or that the damage can be minimized.

Whereas Starbucks dude is a corporate type who doesn't like the left and would most likely run on a moderate conservative platform as an independent. So that could potentially suck away all the independent/conservative NeverTrump types. Same thing as Kasich. Of course it's going to make the left angrier. It's a candidate who they don't really agree with who will take key votes away from non-leftists who might otherwise vote Democrats. You can go after those guys a little more without offending your base/fellow liberals. But mostly, it's that there's no positive outcome from those guys running. They can't win, but they will take away potential votes and even if they somehow did win, very few on the left support their policies.

In 2016, it was basically Hillary vs. Bernie. That Hillary was officially backed (and helped) by the party in every which way, allowed Bernie even more to set himself apart and make it look like he was a victim. Which in a way he was of course. OTOH, it's only because Hillary was such an incredibly weak candidate that Bernie was able to make such a deep run.

This time around, though, not only is there no Hillary to slap around, but furthermore, it's going to be a very large group, maybe as many as 15 or 20 hopefuls by the time all is said and done. That will make it much harder for Bernie to set himself aside.

So I suspect that Bernie's impact this time around will not nearly be as significant as it was in 2016. Not to mention that he is a very old (and very white) guy. And did I mention old?

I know the US Constitution requires a presidential candidate to be at least 35 years old. Why is there no ceiling? Say, 70? Nobody older than 70 has any business running for president/being president.

Hillary wasn't that weak of a candidate. I mean, she wasn't a Barrack Obama, or anywhere close but she wasn't that weak either. Just kind of run-of-the-mill.

Moreover, she was a far stronger candidate than Sanders who was too far left for most of the populace and did not have much corporate/big money backing both for policy and personal ethics reasons.

And on top of all that, it is difficult to imagine a weaker candidate in every respect than Trump. He's far and away the biggest buffoon I've seen in my lifetime. Even if I agreed with his policy I still wouldn't vote for that fool.

And yet, Trump won. Blame Roger Stone, or the Russians or PC culture or whatever you choose. But that election was not decided based on the candidate. The next one won't be either. Because again, if Trump is running and any sort of personal qualification or character issues are involved, it wouldn't even be a race. Every single Democrat would easily win without even trying.

The fact that we're talking about how Democrats can try and pitch a perfect game pretty much tells how little the candidate matters. Right? Because the odds are already stacked against them when they should be monstrously in their favor.

If no one can peal the Trump supporters away from Trump then Trump wins again. More socialist (I use that term carefully, the fight is always somewhere between pure capitalism and pure socialism IMO) anyway, more socialist policies won't peal them away. It's people who the economy forgot but hate the idea, or pretend to hate the idea, of handouts.

She didnít ďmisread the electorate.Ē She had no chance of winning those voters over.

She got destroyed for calling Trumpís base deplorable... and she was absolutely correct on that. In the meantime, Trump is calling immigrants rapists and murderers and talking about pussy grabbing and calling every liberal worse names on a daily basis.

Clinton took shit for allegedly deleting her emails, but Trump would not even release his tax returns.

Clinton got in trouble for laughing about a rapist (which she didnít) in the meantime Trump skates for trying to put the Central Park 5 away. And I mean, this was some long ago shit. This was literally still happening DURING his campaign, he was saying he did not think they were innocent.

You have low info. citizens like our daytime drinking here who believe Clinton killed dozens of people. Tell me how going to Wisconsin is going to fix that.

You still donít get it. Clinton was not that bad a candidate. Trump did not ďsteal your party.Ē The Republicans have been doing the olí Southern strategy for decades. Stone is a Nixon guy. Thatís how far back this goes.

Ohio is supposedly a bell weather state. Blackwell brazenly rigged the election in 2004 and won the GOP primary two years later. Probably BECAUSE he rigged the elections.

You want to know what happened in Wisconsin? A bunch of rust belt rednecks who have always had more in common with the GOP racial views used to vote Democrat because of unions. Then Ryan busted up all the unions, people had no jobs, and no reason to vote Democrat. Also, people who could get jobs got the hell out of there. So all that was left were angry conservative idiots, whose votes perversely became much more powerful than liberal votes.

Thatís why Sanders went over so well amongst some Trump supporters. He stayed away from race issues and sucked labor dick and played up to their xenophobia by criticizing trade agreements. He was basically the left wing Trump.

You know what Clinton was doing when she didnít go to Wisconsin? She went to Ohio, Florida, and North Carolina. Which were also swing states. And which she also lost. It turns out of course that North Carolina blatantly cheated, and is still cheating. Floridaís Secretary of State is a racist. Already mentioned Ken Blackwell. Iím not saying that votes were not counted and Clinton actually won. Iím saying these are three swing states where voters gave zero shits about voting for a party short circuiting Democracy. If thatís the mood in the swing states then things are not going to go well for liberals. Clinton canít possibly cover every swing state. In the meantime Trump was holding campaign rallies that appealed to no one other his base.

There was no way that Clinton could have credibly run as a blow-it-up outside candidate. She was doomed from the start. The Democrats might (though I doubt it) have won had they gone with a left-wing Trumpalike. Is that really what you want? Thatís your definition of a good candidate?

Clinton is actually a pretty decent speaker. Didnít you say she actually won over your vote with her last week appearance. And you didnít know a single Republican voting for a Trump? And he still won. So, fat lot of good any of that did.

Iíll also point out that your man John Kasich is not exactly oozing with charisma. That dude is 100 times a better candidate than Trump, but he got smoked right out of the gates.

The person who can most likely cause Trump to lose (though not necessarily win the election) is someone who can out-Trump Trump. Get Fox News and Roger Stone and Russia behind him working the low info., all-feel voters and you can peel off enough votes to defeat him.

I disagree with Markalot in that I donít think Trumpís actual hardcore base is enough for him to win. The problem is the so-called independents who donít have a strong political affiliation but are highly volatile and unpredictable. The strategists who know how to reach those people are all on one side of the aisle. That may not be coincidence, but at any rate thatís the big barrier.

Trumpís base are not low info. voters. They have tons of info. Most of it is wrong, but they still have info. And will not easily change their minds.

My only comment on the above post is that I don't believe there was any rigging or election fraud that would have changed an outcome. We did see a case of fraud that might have changed the outcome and it was busted, and busted bad. I also recall a conversation no more than 2 years ago lamenting how the republicans would never lose the house due to rigged redistricting.

I do not disagree as to why Clinton lost. I'm not sure she would have done any better if she showed up in Wisconsin.

It's not the cheating itself, so much as the fact that Republicans are okay with cheating. Its not that every Republican has not renounce their party and vote Democrat because some candidate in some election cheated. But you shouldn't reward those exact people with elected positions ever again, much less allow them to elevate themselves. Like Blackwell and Kobach should have fucked off long ago but they're still around. Manafort and Stone actually WERE basically told to go away, but now they're back.

The GOP is just so far gone, man. CPAC was a clown show. Watch Trump's speech, look at the list of speakers. This is not normal behavior. Like, totally ignore any policy points and just observe the language that's used, and how people react. It's full-on cult.

I think that if Sanders had not run, or chosen to run in a way different than he did then there would have been a little better youth turnout and the Democrats might have won. Nothing Clinton did really mattered. And no other candidate would have done any better.

But beyond that, would it have mattered if Clinton won? The GOP would remain just as crazy. They would have had both branches of Congress. Plus some of the Bernie Bros. were basically just as insane as the far right.

I think it's the same thing in 2020. I don't know if it really matters all that much which Democrat wins the nomination. We've completely bypassed normal elections and separation of powers as we know it. I don't know how crazy things can get, but I think pretty clearly that at least anything non-violent is fair game as far as the right is concerned. And violence might only be out for self-preservation reasons rather than moral. Hopefully it's not that bad, but it's pretty scary.

But there's really only two ways out of this: Something pretty terrible happens, or we last long enough for old white men die.